The risk factors nobody wants to write about

Ronan Whitlow’s programme contains nothing that would make a documentary. It also has more evidence behind it than most of what would.

Risk factor work is unglamorous and continues indefinitely. It is also, by a wide margin, the part of the pathway with the most evidence behind it.

One year on

Acute care was never the weak point. The ambulance was fast, the intervention was routine, and discharge came in five days. What almost failed was everything after.

The unglamorous half of cardiology is the half that works. That’s an awkward thing to fundraise on.

Ines Cardoso, nurse practitioner

What the monitor caught

Uploads were reviewed twice weekly. The calls that followed were rarely about anything dramatic — a heart rate recovery that had drifted the wrong way across four sessions, that sort of thing.

“I feel exactly the same as I did two years ago,” he says. “That’s apparently the result.”